Today, radio host Rush Limbaugh joined Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell and three other conservative leaders in a statement blasting broadcast networks ABC, CBS, and NBC for virtually eliminating coverage of the on-going IRS targeting scandal.

Since the news first broke that the IRS was targeting conservative groups - particularly the Tea Party - coverage by the Big Three news networks has evaporated, from 96 stories in the first two weeks to zero stories over nearly a month-long period:

96 stories in the first two weeks (May 10 through May 23),

32 stories in the subsequent weeks (May 24 through June 17),

11 from June 18 through June 28,

Zero stories from June 28 until July 24, when CBS Evening News gave the scandal a minute and a half -- the only network coverage for the entire month of July so far.

Yet, all during this time, the IRS scandal has actually been growing, the release notes:

"$70 million in bonuses to IRS agents, hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts granted to a business owner with a friend inside the agency,"

"Agents abusing IRS credit cards to pay for such things as diet pills, romance novels and even online pornography,"

"A Congressional hearing that 'revealed that the IRS chief counsel's office appears to have been directly involved in the IRS's scheme to target Tea Party and conservative groups.'"

In their statement - also signed by David N. Bossie, president, Citizens United Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder, Tea Party Patriots, and Tony Perkins, president, Family Research Council - the conservative leaders say the scandal is more newsworthy than even former President Richard Nixon's vendettas against political opponents:

"This IRS scandal is worse than Richard Nixon using the IRS to punish his powerful political enemies. This is an unprecedented abuse of IRS power perpetrated by liberals to persecute and harass ordinary American citizens - the same ordinary American citizens who rely on ABC, CBS, and NBC to report the news fairly and accurately.

"Our friends and neighbors have been targeted by their own government for special mistreatment because they don't agree with the Obama Administration, and the liberal media elites simply don't see anything wrong with that. The broadcast networks could use their immensely influential platform to tell the truth and hold the powerful accountable for their misdeeds. But instead, they've turned their back on their own professional responsibility."

They go on to say that this censorship of coverage is proof of just how corrupt the liberal media have become:

"The liberal media's refusal to cover the IRS scandal - more than the NSA scandal, more than DOJ's surveillance of journalists, more even than the tragic loss of life in Benghazi - cuts to the very heart of their corruption. No fair, objective journalist can look at the facts of this flagrant abuse of power and not conclude that it is a massive political scandal deserving of constant, merciless scrutiny."

Journalists who deny the importance of covering this scandal are no more than political shills who are giving their approval to the persecution of conservatives, they conclude:

"Any 'so-called' journalist who says otherwise is at best an ethically bankrupt shill for the administration and at worst thinks conservatives should be persecuted by the government for their beliefs."